No Promises, No Demands
by winter machine
Summary: "What's going to happen after the summer?"  She asks him this one late evening, when they've stayed past closing time and are huddled close under a blanket, sharing one adirondack chair. (Addison and Derek as teen parents, prompted by Fatema.)
1. Chapter 1

Addison and Derek as teen parents, requested by Fatema. Alternate universe. Divided into a few chapters due to excessive length, but I'm posting them all at once.

* * *

_We are young, heartache to heartache we stand _  
_No promises, no demands _  
_Love is a battlefield_

_We are strong, no one can tell us we're wrong  
Searchin' our hearts for so long, both of us knowing  
Love is a battlefield_

Pat Benatar (1983)

* * *

Life goes in cycles. That's what they say, anyway.

The Krebs Cycle, for example. She's got her textbook open in front of her, still covered in green-and-white Academy of the Sacred Heart print. Turns out when they expel you they don't take back the book jackets. Even though she's not supposed to need AP Chem anymore.

Then there are menstrual cycles.

_I'm never late._

_What does it mean?_

_What do you think it means?_

_I think it can't mean that. It can't!_

And the feeding cycle.

Jodie's crying again. Jodie's always crying, and Derek's not here. She holds the baby to her breast and waits to feel maternal. It will happen eventually. Everything's a circle, so she'll give her daughter what her mother couldn't give her. Wait, that's not right.

_Jodie_ was both of their idea. The name, not the baby. The baby was no one's idea. The baby was the surprise, the unexpected, her punishment for enjoying herself. She stole seaweed-scented minutes in the boathouse and her swelling belly stole her future in return. You learn, when you have to: how to help the baby latch. How to wait until Thursdays for diapers because that's when CVS puts them on sale. You learn that nothing is guaranteed and everything is reversible.

_Don't you have a trust fund or something?_

_Had. I had a trust fund. It wouldn't have matured until I was twenty-one anyway, but..._

She was supposed to wear bikinis this summer, not stretch marks. Sing Pat Benatar, not lullabies. For a while, when she was first morning sick, she thought it was actually _sickness. _Punishment for letting him touch her. More than touch her. His hands all over her and -

_Why is Addie talking to that ... waiter?_

He couldn't be a sail instructor because, you know, the hierarchy is strict. Sailing instructors come from the best members' families. Lifeguards, second down the line. Then swim teachers. She assumes it's still this way at the club, but she can't know for sure, because she's not welcome at the Montgomeries' cabana at Round Acres anymore.

It started when he smiled at her. It went like this:

She's wearing a white one-piece suit, a style she copied from one of Archer's girlfriends, cut higher on the leg than usual. She's lining up for the high board because she wants to make varsity swim this year and because her pike needs work. He's passing by with a silver catering tray wearing the silly khaki shorts they make all the guys in the kitchen wear and a forest green uniform polo. Then he looks at her and his eyes are so blue it takes her breath away. She climbs the ladder with half her gaze still on him and when she gets to the end of the board she turns, just slightly, and sees that he's looking at her still. He smiles. Her face floods with heat. She counts, one-two, down-up and it's the best pike she's ever done.

She hits the cool water, plunges deep in, and when she breaks the surface of the pool Trip Stewart, who swims for Boys Academy, actually looks impressed.

Just a smile and she makes the best dive of her life. That's how much she felt it, that first time. That's how deeply.

It's three days before she talks to him again. Her mother's at the lake house and her father's on the Vineyard but she stuck around this summer to take marine biology three mornings a week at the University. College is competitive these days and she wants the best. It won't do just to excel at Sacred Heart, to go to states in doubles tennis. She needs more. But that's just mornings, and she can study in the afternoons at the club, in the sun. She orders an iced tea and when it comes she nods her thanks without looking - like she usually does - and then realizes that it's _him. _That waiter.

"Marine Bio, huh?"

His voice is light, almost musical.

She feels color rising in her cheeks. _Stop being so awkward, Addie! _She's shy around boys, always has been, but he's not like Trip and the others, isn't leering at her breasts or making stupid jokes, just looking with genuine interest at her textbook.

"Guilty," she says in response because she heard Lolly Fowler say that once to a boy and it sounded cool.

"Are you in college?"

It's a forward question but she shrugs it off as if she's confused for a college student all the time. "For the summer I am. I mean, I'm taking Marine Bio at the University."

He raises his eyebrows. "Wow. I wish I could do that."

She wants to ask _why can't you_ and then she remembers that he works here, at the club, every day. Maybe he doesn't have time. Or - and this is sort of uncomfortable because it's not polite to think about much less talk about, but maybe he doesn't have the money.

"Are _you_ in college?" she asks, because fair's fair. His nametag says _Derek._

He shakes his head. "High school. I'll be a junior next year. I'm starting AP Chem in the fall but we don't have any other AP sciences."

She schools her face in a neutral expression. Only one AP science? She knows her private school has a wide variety of classes and that she's lucky to get such an excellent education - she's not sheltered or anything, she tutors fifth grade kids at the public school in Bridgeport during the year and they're perfectly nice.

"How is it?"

For a minute she's not sure if he means the iced tea or her class, but he's looking at her textbook again so she says, honestly, "It's great." She loves being in the vast college lecture hall with students older than she is, driving herself to and fro in Archer's blue convertible. And the professor, with his handlebar mustache and suede-patched blazer - it's chilly in the air conditioning - the way he handles the subject matter, treating them like adults.

She notices his lips part for a minute like he's going to say something but then he pauses, slips his order pad back into his pocket and says: "Can I get you anything else?"

"No, thank you," she says politely, really thinking _ask me more about the class, _but she would have had to say it to his retreating back. She leans against the lounge cushions, walking him walk away. She decides forest green is actually a nice color.

The next time she seems him Archer's home and they're in the cabana, sun shining through the open front of the attractively weathered structure. Addison's got her textbook open on her lap, an orange highlighter in her fingers as she reads, and then she hears, "What can I get you?" and recognizes his voice immediately. She looks up, hoping she won't blush too obviously this time.

"A G&T," Archer says coolly and Addison rolls her eyes behind oversized sunglasses, because everyone knows the drinking age is 19 now but Archer and his friends have decided it doesn't apply to them.

The guy - Derek - pauses and Archer pounces. "Is there a problem?"

"No, sir, but-"

"Then what are you waiting for?"

Addison winces, hoping the enormous blue beach towel she's draped over her legs will hide her from view. She knows Archie doesn't mean to be like this, it's just -

"Archie, don't be awful," trills Katie - or is it Cary? - who's a predictably stunning brunette.

Addison looks up then and finds herself catching Derek's eye.

"Hello?" Archer waves a hand in front of his face and Addison finds herself annoyed.

"Cut it out," she says before she can stop herself and Archer shoots her a _what's it to you_ look.

Derek takes advantage of the commotion to say "Right away, sir," and escape from the cabana.

"You know rules don't apply to Archie," Katie/Cary giggles, twisting a lock of perfect hair around one manicured finger. Addison rolls her eyes _again,_ almost hoping they can see her expression through her sunglasses. Or, if she's honest, that Derek could see her expression earlier, and knows she's not like _them._

The third time, that's exactly what she says. "I just want you to know I'm not like _them._" She says it to his back while he's carrying a tray up to the gazebo and if he's startled that she's there he hides it well.

"Like whom?" he asks and she feels a little frisson of delight at his grammar. _Nerd, _Archer would have said, throwing something at her. He's finished his first year at Princeton now, but that's different, he likes to explain to Addison, _nerdiness _is about behavior, not grades. Whatever, she feels emboldened and takes a few steps to catch up to him.

"Them," she says. "You know," and, feeling inarticulate, she gestures at the general environment of the club.

He gives her a bland smile. "Okay."

"I'm not!"

"Okay," he repeats. "You're not."

"I'm not _what_," she prompts, and she feels half a smile quirking at her lips. Is this - is she _flirting_?

"You're not like them," he parrots. And the smile he gives her then isn't bland at all. She's not the only one flirting, apparently.

"Thank you," she says primly, turns on her heel, and walks away, knowing that he's watching her.

The last time - well, the last time _before _- it's almost dusk, the sunset sails have already set off, and she's alone in the west gazebo because it's a nice place to study. He takes one step in before apologizing - stammering that he just wanted to clean up from an earlier picnic. "Wait," she says.

"Do you need anything?"

_You._

She gestures wordlessly at her book. Then she closes it. The pull she feels is so strong, she can't quite explain it, except that she feels different when he's around and she likes it and so he needs to be around, to stay, so she can be that person. She stands up and walks over to him. "Stay," she says.

"I can't-"

"Please."

"Look-"

"Addison," she says, before he can say anything else. "I'm Addison."

"Addison," he repeats.

"Do you - want to study with me?"

"Study?"

"You said you wanted to learn Marine Bio."

"I do!"

"So have a seat." She pats the cushion next to her.

"I'm - on duty."

"No one can see you up here."

They make it through an entire chapter and two discussion questions before she leans forward and changes her life by pressing her lips against his.

"Addison, people are going to-"

She tells him she knows a place, and she takes him there.

On the canvas striped cushions in the dim peaceful light of the boathouse she learns every inch of him. She runs her hands over his bare chest, notices the flat planes of muscle, the sprinkling of dark hair. The jut of his hip breaks her heart, the length of his leg, the curve of muscle at his thigh. She drinks it all in, can't get enough of him, even his funny-looking long toes with their dark hair. He plays baseball. He's strong but his hands are surprisingly delicate. They're the same size as hers, palm to palm, fingers slim and articulated. And oh, how they make her feel.

He's as inexperienced as she is, he admits it, but whatever drives him - enthusiasm, lust - those fingers make her skin tingle. When he looks at her, she's beautiful. The awkward size of her hands and feet - the _Montgomery flippers_, her swim teammates called them - her height - she's somehow perfect in his arms. Everything fits. It smells like seaweed in the boathouse, salt and something heavier, muskier, when he peels off her bathing suit and kisses the damp chilly skin underneath. He rocks against her and she decides she finally gets it, she knows what love songs are about, the dog-eared romance novels her friend Halsey used to steal from the library - they just _fit. _He's hard where she's soft, thrusting where her body gently yields to him.

"You okay?" he murmurs, after, and she tries to think of a word for what she feels. _Everything, _she wants to say. _I'm everything. _She just kisses him instead.

The summer takes on a new light, a new rhythm. Three mornings a week she drives to the university with a spring in her step, a sparkle in her eyes. In the afternoons she takes her textbooks to the club, holes up in the boathouse and waits for him. On his breaks she tells him what she learned that day while he massages the tension from her shoulder, kisses the side of her neck. They talk about everything: what they like about school, and what they hate. Where they want to go to college - somewhere in a city for her, and in the country for him. And where they want to live. New York, she says. In the winter I'll skate in Central Park and in the summer I'll lie on the Great Lawn and sun myself. I want to live by a lake, he says. Go fishing. Have it quiet, so quiet, without any neighbors around. She didn't know he could fish, and asks several questions about this.

Maybe I'll catch you a fish someday, he teases her, serve it to you right off the rod. She wrinkles her nose. That sounds a little _too _fresh, she chides gently. She asks him about the quiet - is it loud at his house? Then it's his turn to get quiet. He has a big family, he tells her. Three older sisters and one little one. There's always something going on.

She's envious, she admits, always wanted a sister.

_Take mine, _he says, and she laughs.

"My brother isn't - you know, he isn't how he seems," she apologizes for him without knowing how to, tries to explain with hands and words that he's just spent too much time under Bizzy's influence and doesn't seem to mind it as much as Addison does. A strange looks comes over his face when she starts to talk about her parents.

"What?"

"Nothing." He shakes his head. But it's something.

"Tell me."

He looks pained, then finally, slowly, admits what he walked in on in the gazebo last month. She winces, not surprised, and finds herself just hoping the blonde lifeguard was over eighteen.

"I'm so sorry."

She shrugs. "It's - he does that kind of thing a lot," she admits, and it's the first time she's said it out loud. She explains that facts: that her mother doesn't know, that Addison is complicit in his lies, that she can't really blame Bizzy for her maternal failings knowing how badly the Captain has failed as a spouse. How hard it is for her to hide his peccadilloes, but she knows she has to because if Bizzy found out it would be her fault.

"It's not your fault," he says, but she just shakes her head and assures him that he simply doesn't understand.

Derek listens quietly, nods, then tells her his father died when he was thirteen.

Her eyes widen at the thought, then fill with tears when he tells her how it happened. "Oh my gosh, Derek."

She puts her arms around him and he wraps his around her and slowly, carefully, they sink into seaweed scented cushions and make the rest of the world disappear.

No one finds out, not really, but they're spotted together occasionally. Once Archer asks her and she denies everything, of course.

Then there are Heather and Talbot, who are bitches even without Missy, the third member of their crew. They've never been very nice to her but now they look at her like they know, and Heather moves a streaked curl off her shoulder with one perfect manicured finger. Addison shoves her hand into her pocket, wishing she could gnaw on her bitten cuticles without looking like an idiot. She reminds herself they have no idea of the truth. They only know what they think they know.

"A _waiter, _like, for serious?"

Addison says nothing.

Talbot makes the final pronouncement; she usually does: "Ew."

They turn and walk away and Addison bites savagely at the already shredded skin next to her index finger. Their tight acid-wash jeans disappear and she realizes she's drawn blood.

Derek's friends are no better. The club is their space, just for them, but one morning when she doesn't have class she spots him with another guy she's never seen before, taller than him a square jaw and broad shoulders and sandy hair sticking straight up. Addison can tell before she's three feet away that he thinks pretty highly of himself.

"Addison, this is my friend Mark. He's subbing today as a _huge _favor."

"Hey," Mark says, his gaze resting directly on her breasts, and she folds her arms. _Typical jerk._

"Hi," she says shortly, looking over his right shoulder.

"So." And she doesn't really like his appraising tone. "You're the girl Derek told me about."

"Depends," she says coolly. "What did he tell you?"

Mark chuckles. "She's sharp. I like this one, Derek."

"Don't bother," Addison says and this time both guys laugh. She takes a minute to enjoy the attention, then says: "I'm going swimming."

"Want company?" Mark calls after her retreating back.

"Who _was _that?" she asks that evening, curled up in Derek's arms, naked. He's running his fingertips down her back in that way she likes that makes her chilly and heated all at once. Everything's hazy and quiet like it is, after.

"He's my best friend." Derek shrugs. "He's like a brother, you know."

"He doesn't seem to be much like you," Addison observes.

Derek smiles; she's not sure why.

"What's going to happen after the summer?" She asks him this one late evening, when they've stayed past closing time and are huddled close under a blanket, sharing one adirondack chair.

He looks past her, toward the water. "I don't know."

They never find out what would have happened. Four days before the club is due to close for the season, she flips casually through her calendar and then gasps when she figures it out.


	2. Chapter 2

_We're losing control  
Will you turn me away or touch me deep inside?_

* * *

_It's just that I'm late, I'm never late._

_What does it mean?_

_It can't mean that, it just can't!_

September is fierce that year with humidity, as if the summer is trying to extend itself. In whispered phone calls, late at night, she confirms their worst fears.

_I'm sorry._

_Don't say that. It's not your - it's my fault too._

_Our fault._

_Our baby._

His tone is reassuring, but the words make her cry.

She memorizes his home number, writes it down sometimes in her notes at school, in between quadratic equations and interpretations of _To the Lighthouse. _She sits hunched forward, a cardigan draped artfully across her shoulders, hoping it will hide her swollen breasts.

She calls him late at night when no one can walk in or overhear, on the white princess phone in her room, feet tucked under her. She's always cold lately and pulls a pink angora blanket across her legs. "We need to talk," she whispers, and he says he'll pick her up.

He parks way back on the private drive and she tiptoes out in fur-lined slippers, slides into his car.

"You need to tell your parents," he says as they roll slowly down the drive; he clicks on the left hand blinker, looking sympathetic but determined.

"You don't understand!"

"Addison, you're going to start - I mean, unless you want to - but we -" he breaks off.

"I don't want that," she mumbles, and fiddles with the controls in the station wagon, trying to turn up the heat. It's going to be Halloween soon. Maybe she'll dress as an ordinary student, one whose life isn't falling apart.

"I want to keep the baby."

He's gripping the steering wheel with both hands, watching the road - there are hardly any lights on this back road, and she's not sure where they're heading - so she can't see his expression. Then he nods, and she watches his curly hair bounce slightly, up and down. "Okay," he says, like that time she stopped him on the hill. The girl who flirted with him then seems forever ago. "Okay," he says again.

Susan notices before her parents do. Of course. She's bringing up a dress she's had tailored and walks into Addison's room without knocking. Addison's in a tank top and underwear and wraps her arms around herself immediately, protectively. Susan turns away, hangs the dress in her closet.

"I had it taken in a half inch," she says as Addison shrugs quickly into a robe.

"Um, thanks."

"But maybe I shouldn't have."

Addison gulps. "Susan-"

"You haven't told your parents?"

She says nothing.

"Addison."

"I haven't told anyone," she admits.

"Oh my god. Addie, they're going to find out."

"Don't tell them," she says sharply, every fiber of her voice saying _you're just the staff, _and Susan, even though she's only about five years older than Addison, calls her _Addie _and treats her like a friend, knows her place and nods dutifully.

Susan's there when she finally tells them, because she can't button her uniform skirt around her waist anymore and a safety pin looks so terribly gauche, and she thinks maybe they'll just handle this with silence like they do everything else until the Captain flexes one fist and says "Who is he?"

Addison looks down at her feet. "His name is Derek."

The Captain is still looking at her, expectantly, waiting for a surname, a place or a fortune to figure out who they are. _He's a Lowell, but not the Greenwich Lowells. Or Derek Margate, remember the Margates, from the ball in Hartford._

"He, um, I met him at the club."

Everyone's quiet for another moment, then the Captain frowns. "Not this - _waiter_ - Archer said was sniffing around you this summer-"

"Captain," Bizzy says sharply and he falls silent. Then she turns to Addison. "Is this true?"

Addison swallows.

Bizzy's hand flutters to her heart. "I need a drink," she manages, even though she's already holding a cocktail, and Susan leaps to her feet.

She comes back in with a tray of lowball glasses. The Captain takes one and drinks deeply. Addison waves her away. She doesn't say _I'm sixteen _or _I'm pregnant_ because she knows those aren't the kinds of things you say to a drink in this house.

The Captain takes a deep breath. "I'll make an appointment for her."

Addison flinches at _her_; he's not even talking to her. "Wait, what?"

"To get this taken care of."

"No, I-" She shakes her head. Maybe she waited this long on purpose. "I'm - done with the first trimester already." She sees both her parents wince, almost imperceptibly, at the term _trimester._

"That won't be a problem."

"But-"

"Kitten," the Captain's tone is soothing. "We're thinking of what's best for you here. I know people-"

"I don't want to."

"It will be private."

"I want to keep it." She laces her fingers across her midsection and a shadow crosses her mother's face.

"You can't be serious."

"I want to keep it," she repeats. She's never asked for anything before. Why not now?

"It's been legal for ten years, Addison," her father attempts. "You have the right."

Addison shakes her head. "I don't think it counts as a right if you're forcing me into it," she retorts and then jerks back as sudden heat floods her cheek. She clutches her burning skin as Bizzy draws her hand back.

Addison just stands still, finding it hard to believe she's been slapped in the the movies it looks - neater. Carefully she draws her fingers away. Her cheek still stings.

"If you insist on this foolishness, you will no longer be a member of this family."

With as much dignity as she can muster, she looks right at Bizzy.

"You're a terrible mother," she says, more wonder than malice in her tone.

Bizzy's expression is cool as ice. "Well, dear, the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree."

It's different for Derek. He doesn't get it. He wakes up and goes to school as usual - she knows this, because he calls her when no one's home and he goes to the doctor with her, driving what she knows is his mother's station wagon. He looks the same: hair a little longer and scruffier, that slight squint because he knows he needs glasses but thinks it'll interfere with his pitching. He's still on the team and everything.

Not Addison. She folded up her Sacred Heart uniforms and her navy blue team swimsuits and let her mother's secretary figure out what to do with them. Bizzy had already stopped speaking to her altogether. Addison still had a charge card back then and used it for some forgiving elastic-waisted skirts and then regretted it when she got to her first class at the alternative school in Stamford. There were girls there with teased hair, hard looking girls in leggings and acid wash with giant hoop earrings. Addison felt prissy and stupid in her pressed collared shirt, her pleated skirt. They whispered about her. Called her _p__reppy _and _richie rich_ before settling on _Princess Di._

"Shouldn't you be somewhere a little nicer?" one of them asked her that first week, sarcastically. She had the flat vowels of the mill towns and Addison just bit the inside of her cheek, hard, and used her pink uniball pen to fill in all the circles in the open page of her textbook. She never would have done that at Sacred Heart. Maybe she's changing too. But even as she gets used to the other girls - several of whom have swollen bellies too - she can't but notice that the algebra is stuff she did two years ago. She was supposed to be in Calc B this year.

Instead she's here, trying to get a GED in an alternative school while her life slides farther away from her grasp the bigger her belly swells. She can stay until she shows, that's what they told her, so Bizzy's secretary drives her to an apartment her parents have paid six months rent in advance on - or, knowing them, some untraceable foundation has paid it.

"You should call Bizzy," Susan murmurs. "I think if you apologized-"

"For what?" Addison shrieks, because she's almost six months pregnant and she's done being quiet. She's done with everything except this baby and Derek. They're all she needs.

Susan presses her lips together. "Good luck," she says; Addison slams the door hard and enjoys her flinch.

Oddly enough, the first month is almost fun. Derek visits and helps her set up. They investigate and the rent is more than they'll be able to swing, so they enjoy it while they can, before they have to move. It's furnished simply but it's hers; they stretch out on the queen-sized bed and Derek rubs her aching calves, her feet. He tells her she looks beautiful even when she feels repulsive, bovine. Her breasts seems enormous to her now; Derek looks at them with appreciation and lust but they're too sensitive for his questing fingers. _I'm happy just to look_, he tells her. _Everything's going to be okay_, he tells her, and she believes him. His words are warm, like the blanket he used to wrap around her, afterwards, when she shivered lightly in his arms.

This, it turns out, is _what happens after the summer._

Archer visits, once. He looks around, then presses a hundred-dollar bill into her hand and tells Derek not to be an asshole.

_Your family is -_

_Don't say it. _And she cries because she can't believe she's never going back to her pink princess bed or her pink princess life and because Archer's at Princeton, his Forbes inheritance locked up in trust, with no real access to anything that could help them.

Derek's going to get a job. So will Addison, sometime. And then she'll go back to school. And they'll have a baby who looks like both of them and it will love her the way her family doesn't. Derek's her family now anyway.

He says _I love you_ in the dark, he holds her gently, spooning her and the baby all at once, strokes her belly as it grows. It's drum-tight now; they feel the baby kick.

_Are you scared? _Derek asks her.

She's scared every second but something tells her he can't know that. So she denies it, huddles in his arms and hopes it's permanent.

When it happens Derek holds her hand while pain rips through her in waves. She thinks of the boathouse, the seaweed smell and the ache between her legs and his breath in her ear. And then she thinks of nothing but survival, getting through the bone-crushing sensations that threaten to rip her apart. Whatever is inside of her, whatever they've created, feels bigger than both of them.

_Is this normal? _Derek keeps asking. _Is she okay? _She wonders if he still wants to be a doctor someday.

A nurse sponges off her brow and calls her _sweetheart _and she knows they feel sorry for her because her mother's not here, because she's seventeen and in pain and Derek's perspiring almost as much as she is. They refer to him as _D__addy _while they move around him, taking measurements and nodding at each other over her supine body. _Daddy can come stand here and support your legs, _they say and she winces, not ready yet for these names.

She bears down and feels herself breaking and when the baby is finally dragged out of her, screaming, Addison holds the fretful damp bundle to her aching breast and thinks _I know how you feel._

The baby spends her first New Year's Eve wailing and Addison is close to joining her.

"Let's go out," Derek suggests and Addison fights the urge to slap him.

"I can't drink," she snaps, "I'm nursing."

"You can be DD."

"Seriously?" She throws down the battered copy of Spock his mother gave her and he winces.

"Addie, come on-"

"No." She grits her teeth, already tired of this, of feeling like a harried fishwife at seventeen, of the baby's screams and her own nagging tone. Jodie. She wanted to call her Emerson - that's about where she stopped in Lit class - and Derek liked Caroline, after his mother. They named her _Jodie _because they saw it in a magazine and Addison liked that it wasn't not too girly. A few weeks after the birth she already had second thoughts about it but worried they commit teen mothers for changing their babies' names.

Jodie gurgles in her bassinet now, crying spree over, and Addison stands firm even though she could fall asleep on her feet right now. As usual. They're in their own place now, the only one they could afford. There's peeling paper on the walls in the living room and the linoleum in the kitchen is cracked and the Goodwill furniture has seen better days.

"We're not going out."

So Mark comes over there, six feet two inches of swagger, and she rolls her eyes. He says "looking good, Addie," and she pretends she can't hear him. He peers into the bassinet at Jodie and Addison's embarrassed because she's clean, sure, but she's wearing just an undershirt - the heating pipes are all screwy in this apartment, no need for anything more, and she still has dried tear marks on her face from before. Mark just looks at her for a moment, then touches the top of her head, so carefully Addison doesn't even have to say _careful. _"She's an okay kid," he says, but from him it comes out almost like a benediction.

Mark and Derek drink beers on the couch for a while. Addison pulls the afghan around her and sits in the recliner, which only works if you pull the switch twice. Jodie wakes up, three times. She nurses her in the bedroom, watches the numbers on the clock change. She says goodbye to 1983.

_Next year will be better._

"Happy new year." Derek kisses her and she kisses back even though Mark's watching and making a face that makes both of them laugh. She feels benevolent, kisses Mark on the cheek. "I'm going," he shrugs, because there's a party up in Madison and Derek doesn't even ask if he can tag along.

They curl up together in bed, Jodie peaceful in the bassinet Derek's sister handed down.

"It's 1984," Addison whispers.

"Big year."

"Huge."

They kiss softly, then more urgently, and it's the first time since Jodie that she can remember _wanting _it_, _feeling anything.

Then Jodie's awake, making soft peaceful sounds, and she feels horribly guilty.

"Is she going to remember this?"

"God, I hope not."

Addison slinks into the bathroom to shower. The hot water's out again. She rests her head against the blue tile, avoiding the mildew running the length of the crack by the soap ledge, and waits to feel clean.

When the colic lets up, and it sometimes does, and Jodie sleeps in a neat warm ball between them, it feels okay. She holds on to these moments of okay, except when she's too tired and falls asleep with her shirt pulled halfway up, trying to nurse. Jodie's half on formula anyway because she's not that great at latching, but the breast seems to soothe her so Addison nurses her when she can. Anything to stop her crying. Derek tells her _you're doing such a great job _and _you're a wonderful mother. _She pretends it matters and lets him hold her. She falls asleep with her head tucked under his chin.

They're a family, he tells her, and one day they'll be one, officially.

_Addison Montgomery-Shepherd. _She says it in her head. He kisses her deeply and she closes her eyes, pretending they're still in the boathouse. Pretending it's still the summer and she's starting school in the fall. Real school. Pretends her life didn't end looking out at the ocean, under a blanket.

"Do you want me to propose to you?" His eyes are twinkling and she remembers how lucky she is. That he comes home every night - she knows from the girls in her A-school GED class that that's not the norm. That he's so good to them. So sweet.

"Propose to me in Paris," she says, and he grins that half-smile and then Jodie wakes up, howling.


	3. Chapter 3

_And before this gets old, will it still feel the same?_

* * *

Turns out 1984 is nothing like the book. Instead it's a sticky-fingered toddler who can walk and scream _no _and a boyfriend - because that's what he is, she supposes - who's started college. Derek finished high school so of course he's the one who gets to go to college. He works part time on the weekends when she's with Jodie and she works during the day and he fixes his college class schedule around it and his mother helps. It's almost okay but also almost like drowning. She thinks about the sweet chlorine stink of the pool the night they hid in the boathouse until after the club emptied out. She remembers his body moving slowly inside of hers, the lashings of hot water from the filter, the black star-pierced sky.

They're almost never home at the same time. When they're both home he wants sex and if she's honest so does she but some last urge to protect long lost chastity keeps her from complying a lot of the time, lately. It annoys him. And he annoys her.

_I have to study!_

_I wish all I had to do was study!_

She baby-sits some of the other kids in the apartment complex, keeps an eye on Derek's baby sister Amy when she can, for a little extra cash or pizza money. She can type but that's it for skills. Well. She can pour tea, dance a waltz, she was supposed to enter the University's science competition this year, but that doesn't count for much anymore. Sometimes she looks at Derek's college books, when she's not too tired, or when Jodie's up in the middle of the night because Derek needs his sleep for school. She thinks _I could do this _or _I couldn't do this _and considers how strange it is that Derek got to stay in school and keep his family and she has nothing left but him.

And Jodie.

Jodie, if she's honest, annoys both of them. She's round cheeked and sweet sometimes, monstrous other times. She has full-fledged tantrums, hurling herself to the floor. She demands things: mothering skills Addison doesn't have, more milk when Addison's trying to ration it 'til payday. Addison just walks out of the room, tells herself - and Derek - it's a parenting technique. _From Kathleen,_ she says. But Kath is patient and calm with her two. Jodie drives Addison crazy with her demands, her crying. She almost longs for infancy, even with the colic. When Derek's around Addison mimics Kathleen's sweet tone, tries to show him she can be a good mother too. What else does she have?

Jodie spills milk on Derek's textbook and he shouts at her and Addison shouts at him.

Jodie cries and Addison cuddles her close, stroking her hair, and whispering comfort. Not for Jodie's benefit - for Derek's, because she can tell it's making him feel guilty. She sets Jodie down as soon as Derek leaves the room and the toddler turns teary blue eyes on her, comprehending the betrayal.

_Well, dear, the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree._

At night, like she used to, she reminds herself of things.

She balls well-washed cotton in her fists and closes her eyes. _I'm a mother, _she reminds herself. After longer days she's more descriptive. _I'm not a very good mother. _Derek's rarely beside her, usually trying to catch up on studying in the other room. Sometimes she's so tired she falls asleep immediately, the red lights of her alarm clock mocking her, warning how little time she has to rest before it all begins again. Sometimes even when her toes tingle with exhaustion she can't get her body to relax. Then she relives things: Slapping a little hand away from the stove instead of stopping to explain. Turning on the television even when there's no _Sesame Street _just to get a minute's peace. _No _to another drink of water at ten thirty. _No _to the overpriced toys she can't afford, _no _to wearing her saddles in the rain because they won't be able to pay for replacements. Jodie screams at the sight of her rain boots - gum-green hand-me-downs from Kathleen's oldest - and Addison covers her ears.

I _don't like them either! _she yells finally, wishing she could just say it: _I don't like you much either sometimes!_

She pulls the duvet up to her chin - Jodie's in her own little bed and Addison's got her legs stretched out the way she prefers - and reminds herself, as she does: _I'm a teenaged mother. I'm a statistic. I'm unwed. I'm Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery,_ she reminds herself finally, tiredly, because they didn't take her name even if they took her family. _Maybe Shepherd, some day. _She blinks twice, hard. Unwed means no divorce. Statistical avoidance. She smiles, a little bit, and when she wakes up she's not alone - it's cool and damp; Jodie's wet the bed again.

Derek's working hard, busy, studying as much as he can. He talks about pre-med requirements and MCATs and Addison takes it all in tiredly, chin propped in her hand. Derek is consumed with his academics, rarely playing with Jodie or even reading the paper. Addison reads the daily papers in the break room at work every morning and finds its become something of a lifeline. It feels like learning, almost.

That morning she pushes off her break so she can watch. She's not the only one. They put on the small TV in the waiting room and everyone gathers around. She remembers her father saying the space program was a waste of money. Something about disease in the third world and costs. Right now it doesn't feel like a waste - she thinks she might need this, everyone's eyes on the little screen, the newscaster counting down. Maybe it's why she's been reading the paper too, because Derek's always busy and Jodie's a kid and she needs someone to talk to and someone to listen to.

_T minus 8 seconds._

Or maybe it's more. She needs something to believe in.

_Three, two, one._

_Blastoff._

For a moment no one moves, not comprehending what's happened.

There are tears in her eyes. How can something be here one moment, pointed at the sky, and then gone?

She dials home with trembling fingers.

"I'm studying," Derek protests when he answers. Shaky-voiced, she tells him what's happened.

"That's awful, Addie." And then: "I really need to study now."

She clutches the receiver and asks him to wait, wants to talk about it. He rushes her off. "But, Derek-"

"Why are you so upset?"

She doesn't know how to answer that.

"You're too sensitive," he tells her.

Dr. North sees her sniffling at her desk after that, she's embarrassed with balled up green kleenex in one fist, but he's nice about it, telling her it's a shock for everyone. He convinces her to leave for a bite to eat - Marcia will cover her shift, even if she's cutting her eyes sideways at her now. Addison agrees - she's hungry and even if Dr. North's gaze across the red-checked tablecloth is something more than professional, she has to admit the attention is nice.

While it lasts.

"I _said_ I lost my job."

"How?"

"I lost it."

"Addison-"

"It happens!" She screams it this time and Jodie appears in the doorway, fingers in her ears.

"Stop it, Mama!"

"Tell your father to stop it," she snaps, and then feels guilty when Jodie starts to cry.

Derek picks her up, pats her heaving little back awkwardly. "What are we going to do?" he asks and Addison, energy depleted, sinks into the cushions of the couch. The broken coil pokes her in the hip.

"I don't know," she whispers.

"Addison..."

"Maybe you should get a job," she says meanly, finally, digging a jagged fingernail into the couch threads.

"I can't quit school, Addie. If I quit..." he trails off but she knows the answer. If he quits he'll be as screwed as she is: no skills and nothing to show for anything.

She tries to find another job. She says _yes _she can type, _yes _to medical billing, _yes _to almost anything else. She takes in one of the neighbors' kids full time in the meantime, a three-year-old boy. Jodie loathes him and spends half her time shooting him angry glares and the other half trying to protect her few toys from his more destructive urges. Addison hates being home and watching the bills pile up.

She doesn't tell Derek what happened, not really. Not that Marcia said things, called her names, told her they didn't need her _kind_ there. She didn't even do anything! Story of her life, really. If that doctor cared that she got fired he never said anything.

"If I can't find another job, you'll have to quit school." She keeps the satisfaction out of her voice but half of her thinks _then maybe you'll understand what it's like._

"That's not going to happen."

She takes the bus downtown because Derek has the car. It smells like wet and wool and too many people. She recites her resume in her head, reminding herself that no one cares about Sacred Heart or Miss Wickers Dance Academy or the three debutante balls. _Yes, I can type. Yes, I can bill._ She's quiet, keeps to herself, doesn't make trouble. Has a kid. She watches a girl her age with a Sony Walkman. Imagines what it would be like to have music pulsing into her ears all the time, any time she wanted it. Her own personal soundtrack. A music video. Today might be Madonna. She closes her eyes, awkwardly close to tears too much of the time.

"I didn't get the job," she tells Derek, and doesn't say another word, leaving him to put Jodie to bed. She hears her daughter's loud protests at this change in what passes for her routine, and finally the door closing on a last howl. He crawls in behind her and slides questing fingers into her sweatpants. Then she pulls away and throws her words over her shoulder: "Are you kidding me?"

"It's been ages."

"I don't have a job." She stares at the ceiling.

"You'll get one."

They pull through, and he doesn't have to quit school: his part time and her part time and then she lands a job three days a week in a dental office in Bridgeport. She has to take the bus but it's okay because it pays more than the deli. When people are loud she puts her hands over her ears and pretends they're headphones. Sometimes people stare at her like she's crazy. Sometimes she thinks they're right.

_It's not fair!_

Her daughter rages this sometimes, often, in tantrums, when she's trying to get a toy back from a cousin or defend herself from the daycare bullies. Addison just sighs, short sharp exhales, because it's not fair too that Derek is in college making real progress, real grades. That Derek got to graduate from high school. He works hard, sure, but at least he has something to show for it. She has nothing. Her days are cycles that leave her standing still: diapers and training and tantrums and feeding and screaming and cleaning and then they start again.

_I'm smart too, _she tells herself, at night, so quietly that Derek can't hear, and won't know she's awake - and won't bother her.

And she takes company where she can get it.

"Jo-Jo," Amy sing-songs. Her blue eyes are enormous as she reaches for Jodie. "Let's swing!"

Addison is grateful for Derek's family, for the meals and occasional financial help, for welcoming her even if she can't shake the idea that his mother doesn't like her. She should, Addison thinks sometimes, almost bitterly. Derek is still getting to go to school. His life isn't on hold. It's Amy she finds she's closest to, the baby sister Derek passed off as a bit of a screw-up. She's going on fourteen and baby-sits now, to Addison's great relief. She's a little wild sometimes, full of energy, but Addison knows she loves Jodie.

Amy scoops her up and swings her around her head, high and fast, and Jodie squeaks with something between pleasure and fear. Addison intercedes. "Careful, Amy-" but the two of them are lost in their own world. Addison watches them: two babies born at the wrong time: Jodie too soon and Amy too late. The Shepherd family was already done before Amy, they don't really make any secret of that. But Amy's helpful, baby-sitting for free loads of times, just as Addison used to watch Amy for pizza or the chance to sleep in the bigger house. Amy's growing into her looks now, prettier as a teenager than Addison expected from the awkward little girl she met years ago.

Casually, Addison asks her about boys; one statistic in the family enough. Amy laughs it off. _I hate babies,_ she says, _of course I'm careful. _She looks Jodie up and down and adds _no offense._

Derek does better on the MCATs than he expected, but he explains it again, when she asks: "I need state tuition and if I move I can get in-state. There's nothing close by, Addie. I didn't get into UConn, you know that. I have to go where it's cheapest."

She just blinks because it's _California, _my god, it might as well be another country.

"Derek -" She doesn't bother to finish. Another decision slides out of her hands like water.

Carolyn shows up to drive him to the airport. Addison rubs her eyes tiredly, shoves her feet into her keds. Her shoes are all a little too small after giving birth but she can't exactly afford a bunch of new ones. She's said her good-byes, last night. There were tears, silent recriminations, sex that felt less like making love than making a statement. Derek said _we're still a family _and Addison squeezed her eyes closed and thought about having to get up with Jodie every night instead of just most nights. About med school in California, a fresh start for Derek, all the science he could want. _I'm doing this for us, _he said and Addison leaned over and kissed him to see if lies actually taste different from the truth.

Now Jodie follows them out to the car, going on five now and getting tall, twining around Addison's legs like a labrador until she untangles her as gently as she can manage. Addison stops her when she tries to get into her grandmother's station wagon.

"No, Jodie, we're not going with them."

"Why not?'

Addison looks to Derek, propping a hand on her hip, but he just lifts his daughter in his arms and holds her tight for a moment. "I'll be back soon," he says, and Jodie, as if a switch has been flipped, bursts into tears.

Addison rolls her eyes. Let him leave her with this. He leans over, to kiss her or to hand Jodie to her, she's not sure, but she pulls back and he sets Jodie on her sneakered feet on the cracked blacktop. Jodie wails, indignant even if she's not sure what's going on, and Addison lingers, almost enjoying Carolyn's disapproval of her reaction. The older woman turns away slightly, maybe offering privacy, and Addison folds her arms.

"I really think this is what's best for all of us," Derek says. She lets him kiss her goodbye. Didn't she always let him?

_Were you ever going to marry me? _she asks, but not until the car has pulled away.

Jodie stops crying, stuffs a finger in her mouth and looks at Addison curiously.

"Where did they go?" Jodie asks, following Addison toward the uneven cement stairs of their building.

Addison doesn't turn around. "California."

"Where's that?"

Addison holds the door open and jerks her head; dutifully, Jodie trots inside the entryway. It's dank in there and someone's left a phonebook wet from the last rainstorm. The pages are curling softly and the moisture's practically destroyed all the words. "Ask your father," Addison says and lets the door swing shut behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

_There's no way this will die_

* * *

If Derek were here he couldn't deny something's wrong, but he's not. In California it's sunny, that's what his postcards to Jodie say, and not much else. He's going to send them money when he makes it but for now he's sleeping six to a hostel-style dorm or in the 24-hour library a few nights a week. He's struggling too, that's what he tells Addison - first with patience and then with less.

It's not Jodie there's something wrong with anyway. Jodie's growing: taller now and sturdy, firm freckled limbs, scabbed over knees from playing in the scrubby area behind their building. She's something of a tomboy which is good because most of her clothes still come from Lizzie's oldest, Thomas, or Kathleen's boys. Jodie wears a lot of blue. She makes up stories about Smurfs and she still asks to eat her dinner in the bathtub. Addison budgets and rebudgets on a yellow pad from the doctor's office. She chews the tip of her pen and her fingers, relishing Jodie's absence because she's likely now to say _Mama, stop, _when she sees Addison biting.

No, Jodie is - and Addison finds herself knocking wood, superstitiously, even just from thinking this - Jodie's fine. It's Amy she's worried about.

Amy's the one who seems preoccupied, distracted, shadows under her eyes - and there was the night she babysat until ten and Carolyn called at eleven-thirty, asking for her, and Addison bluffed because that's what she used to do for Archer. Amy's not her sister but Addison's not Carolyn's daughter either and no one's roles in this family are exactly set. She can't ask Carolyn if Amy's okay because she worries about her baby, about the five-year-old who could have died, and Addison's nothing if not grateful to Derek's mother.

She can't take anything more from Carolyn.

Addison thinks about the Greenwich estate sometimes. Wonders what they did with her room. Wonders if it's her fault for not missing them. Money is nothing to them, they could support her and Jodie with nothing more than a sneeze. Instead she crosses out _groceries _on her yellow pad and starts again. Beans and rice until payday, but there's nothing wrong with that. Jodie gets a good lunch for free at school. Apples and bananas at daycare. She'll be fine.

"Can I watch TV?" Jodie lingers around the back of the chair and she resists an urge to swat her off.

"Not too loud," she mumbles, and tears the sheet off completely. She'll have to start over now.

When she picks up the jangling phone it's Carolyn; she's going to tell her they can't come for dinner this Sunday because they're busy - even though really it's because she's rationing gas money - but Carolyn just chokes out _come _and _Amy _and Addison throws Derek's old barn jacket on over her pajamas and lays a sleeping Jodie down across the back seat and drives with her heart in her mouth.

_She took something,_ that's what Carolyn said, and _she might not make it._

Addison cries because it's Amy and she's only fifteen. Fifteen is too young. Fifteen-year-olds should make it.

Mark's there, in the hospital. He was at the house, she finds out, he's the one who restarted Amy's heart. Addison shudders at the thought. Maybe she never would have made it as a doctor, after all. Mark's in medical school now like Derek, but locally, and Addison doesn't ask what he was doing at the Shepherds' place. Carolyn just takes them all in without asking, the wider circle of people who buzz around her son.

Addison just looks at Mark and then they hug, a hard, formal hug, somewhere between fear and relief. She hasn't seen him since Derek left. He looks older, his eyes shadowed. But they're all older now.

Jodie sleeps across two seats in the waiting room, her head on Carolyn's lap. Addison is pacing. Nancy's arrived, and Kathleen, but their kids are sleeping at home in their warm houses, with their husbands. She sees the way they look at her, plaid pajama bottoms sticking out from under her coat, and at Jodie's wooly socks with the hole in the toes - she hadn't thought to grab shoes for her. She was moving too quickly. Jodie's winter coat was Thomas's last year and it's still a bit too big, blue with salt stains at the red collar.

They ask each other questions: _did you know it was this bad? _And say things like: _No. I didn't know anything._

Amy wakes up and asks for Addison.

Amy's small and white in the bed, tubes everywhere, her sweating fingers intertwining with Addison's. When she comes back out Jodie's awake but confused, sitting up on Kathleen's lap. "You should call Derek," someone says.

No one does, though.

Mark goes to Amy's room; she's asking for him now. When he leaves, Addison picks her daughter up. "We should go," she says, and no one asks her to stay, so she trudges out to the car, Jodie a dead weight in her arms.

"Why did you forget my shoes?" Jodie's awake in the car, heater humming, poking with interest at the hole in her sock.

"Because I was rushing. Stop that." Addison brushes her hands away from the sock. "You're going to make it worse."

Jodie stops for a moment, then can't seem to resist touching the sock again. "What happened to Aunt Amy?"

"What do you think?" She's curious how much she heard.

"Maybe she died."

Addison nearly runs the car off the road. There's ice anyway, she's gripping the wheel with two hands. She hates driving in the snow. Fuck this, fuck Derek and his family and fuck California. "No, she's fine, Jodie."

"Then why is she in the hospital?"

"Because she's sick. But she's going to be fine."

Jodie leans back, looking at her. "When's Daddy coming home?"

"I don't know."

"For Christmas?"

"I don't know, Jo."

Jodie breathes on the window, traces a line with her finger. Addison's eyes dart from the road to her daughter. "Stop. You're going to leave a mark."

"So?"

Addison doesn't respond.

"For New Year's? Will he be back for New Year's?"

Derek's not that concerned when she talks to him, which is two days later and Amy's already home. "The kids out here experiment with a lot of crazy things. I've seen it." He's a third year medical student now with a few clinical rotations. He acts like he knows everything.

"This isn't some kid, Derek, it's Amy."

He doesn't answer. She curls the telephone cord around her hand, watching the skin turn white, then red again when she uncoils it.

"Put Jodie on?"

She hands her daughter the receiver. "Say hi to Daddy, Jo."

Jodie grips the phone with two hands. "When are you coming home?"

Addison leans back against the wall, picks at a bit of peeling wallpaper with one bitten-down nail. Let Derek answer her questions for once.

Jodie crawls into bed with her that night. The heater's on the fritz again; the apartment is stifling and they're sleeping in underwear and tee shirts limp with perspiration.

"Open the window," Jodie suggests, snuggling close despite the heat and Addison shakes her head. "It's too windy," she says. "The pressure..." but she's not sure if that's right. She doesn't know how to handle the pipes. She doesn't know anything and she waits until Jodie falls asleep and then tiptoes out of bed and opens the freezer door and lets the sweating tendrils of hair around her face turn to icicles. There's a small bottle of vodka in there, a gift from someone. She opens it and swigs a shot. It makes her cold, then hot. She takes another gulp, then leans her head into the freezer to cool off some more. It's January. The whole year is in front of her. She bangs her cheekbone on some frozen peas when she pulls her head out. It'll bruise.

The pipes just pump heat into the small apartment.

She thinks it's Amy or Nancy when she opens the door - Jodie's at Carolyn's - and is shocked that it's Mark. He looks confused too, maybe because she's just wearing a pair of Derek's plaid boxer shorts and a tank top even though it's near freezing outside and snowing - but it must be eighty degrees in here with the fucking faulty heat.

"What the hell?"

"Radiator's on the fritz."

"I'll say." He stomps snow off his boots and some flakes fall from his scruffy chin. He looks sturdy and competent and male, filling up her doorway, and she backs up automatically. Making room.

"Can I take a look?"

"Please."

He twists and turns a few things, asks for her toolbox and sets to work. She sits self-consciously on the kitchen counter, legs swinging, watching him.

"How's school?" she asks him, trying to keep the envy out of her voice.

"Hard. Might take a year off."

"Really?" She just wishes she could be in school.

He shrugs. "It's not really what I expected. What does Derek-" but he maybe sees her expression because he cuts himself off. He concentrates on what he's doing then stands up, brushing his hands against the thighs of his jeans.

"That should do it."

She presses her lips together, as if she's trying to keep something in. "Thank you, Mark."

"No problem."

He moves closer. Her thighs fall further open somehow and his coat is still cold, little droplets of condensation melting against her skin. Fine baby hairs stand up on her arms.

No one has touched her in months.

Then he's kissing her and she's kissing back. It's not Derek, it's totally different. His kisses are deep, like he means it, and the scruff on his face stings every time she parts her lips and moves closer.

He moves to her neck, kissing, nibbling. He moves like he knows what he's doing. Of course he does: he's Mark, he's been fooling around all these years while they were stuck here like idiots, playing house. While she was alone and Derek was doing god knows what in California and they clung to _propose to me in Paris._

She clings to him now and he lifts her from the counter. The apartment is cooling rapidly thanks to his handiwork but it's warm in his arms, warm where the old quilt hits her back as her eyes flutter closed

He lingers between her legs, lips trailing up her thigh and she arches her back, wanting to be closer and further from the sensation all at once. She hesitates when his lips press at the fiery flesh at the apex of her thighs. Derek's tried this a few times but she's usually been too ticklish, or it's felt too strange or self-conscious or - but this is different. He's so sure that her doubts fall away as her thighs fall open. She barely remembers moving to the bedroom, the scratch of the old undershirt sliding off of her. She's somewhere else, somewhere warm with sand and ocean. Or somewhere exciting - New York City maybe, with glittering lights and cars whizzing by, and something red and pulsing like a siren.

"Mark!" She cries out his name, louder than she intended, and convulses around his fingers, his lips, thankful she's too far gone to feel embarrassed. He kisses the tops of her thighs, so gently, and for some reason she wants to cry. He slides up her body, takes her in his arms.

"What have we done?" She mumbles this into his chest, not wanting to lift her head. She wants to be held, she wants to enjoy the apartment's new temperature, she wants this never to have happened and she wants to do it again.

"Don't tell Derek," she implores, unnecessarily.

"Derek's an idiot," Mark glares.

"He's your best friend."

"He's still an idiot."

"He was never going to marry me." Addison isn't even sure why she says this, or why it makes Mark's arms tighten around her.


	5. Chapter 5

_But if we get much closer, I could lose control _  
_And if your heart surrenders, you'll need me to hold_

* * *

This is 1990 and it feels the way it looks: like the beginning of something. Her daughter is going to be seven. Derek is three thousand miles away and that's not different but now Mark is there, his presence filling up the empty spaces in the apartment.

Jodie doesn't ask questions, just plays checkers with Mark on Derek's old set and lets him make her scrambled eggs and pancakes. "Do you only know breakfast?" she asks him once and he laughs and tells her it's his favorite meal.

"Mine too," she agrees.

Addison watches them and lets herself fantasize. It's only fair. She never got fantasies the first time around.

"Leave him," Mark suggests, but she can't. And anyway, Derek's already left her. She can't do any more. She needs him too much: not for himself but for his family.

"Amy baby-sits," she says helplessly. Addison was hoping to try for community college this year, maybe, but only if she has help. She needs them all, desperately, needs Nancy and Kath's hand-me-downs and Carolyn's casseroles and the little loans, some larger than others. She needs the family station wagon when her car is out, the baby-sitting.

"We could be a family."

It's so ridiculous that she stops what she's doing, actually sets down the plastic gallon jug of milk even though Jodie's in the other room and she'll yell out to her if she takes too long, like she always does. "Mark, _what_?"

"A family."

She stares. "We're not - that's not - what do you mean?"

"You, me, Jodie."

Her heart flutters and something inside of her flutters too. But she just shakes her head. She knows fantasy - it sounds like Mark's proposition - and reality, which sounds like Jodie slipping on the ice in too-big hand-me-down boots and cracking her chin on the cement steps. She's screaming, blood running into her yellow scarf, and Addison freezes, a paper sack of groceries in her hand, just staring at her in horror.

Then Jodie's quiet, suddenly. Mark's gathered her up and pressed a towel to her face, he's carrying her to the car. Addison can't look. Silently begging Jodie for forgiveness, she turns her back, leaves it to Mark to help the nurses hold her down while they give her shots and stitch the wound. Jodie's eyes are huge, Derek's exact shade of blue, filled with betrayal.

_I already knew I was a bad mother. But thanks for the reminder._

Mark tells her it wasn't her fault, kids have accidents all the time. He carries Jodie into the apartment when they get back, up the steps. She's exhausted, nodding off against his shoulder, and they prop her up on the broken recliner in the living room to keep an eye on her.

Mark's solicitous, tucking blankets around her, and energized. He's jazzed up again about med school, it seems. "Such tiny stitches," he muses, leaning back on the couch and wincing when, she knows, the loose coil pokes him.

Addison pulls her feet up under her, distracted. In her head she calculates: if Jodie isn't up for school tomorrow she'll have to call in sick for work. She already took two sick days last month when they were both knocked out with stomach flu. Her stomach twists now - as if she has the flu again - at the thought of taking another. She could lose her job. She blinks at Mark, realizing she's been tuning him out.

"What did you say?"

"Just, you know." He picks up a pillow, pokes at the stuffing sticking out of the torn corner. "I think plastic surgery could be really cool."

It takes her a minute to realize what he means. "Yeah," she says, for lack of anything better to say, and thinks of the community college forms untouched in the kitchen drawer. She just needs a little more time. She doesn't think about the untouched applications in the drawer of her old bedroom. Harvard. Wellesley. Bryn Mawr. She left them there, as if her parents might find a replacement, another gawky overachieving redhead, and slide her perfectly into the gap Addison left in their home.

"She's sleeping," Mark notes and Addison glances at her daughter.

"Poor kid." Mark shakes his head. "Did you, uh, are you going to call Derek?"

Addison thinks about the sound it made when Jodie fell, about _we could be a family, _about Mark carrying Jodie into the emergency room, and swallows hard. "Maybe tomorrow."

She fixes pigtails for Jodie and thinks about scars - the one on her daughter's chin, which looks _perfect _according to the surgeon at the free clinic and Mark, who seems to fancy himself an almost-doctor again. And the one she can't see, somewhere inside her, from where Jodie tore her on the way out of her body. Then there are the ones even deeper that she's not sure she could locate or name.

"Is Aunt Amy still picking me up?" Jodie dances away from her when she snaps the rubber band one last time. Jodie hates those little plastic-ball things but that's what they have around.

"Yes."

They're lucky, all of them, that Amy's seventeen now with a driver's license, that she loves her niece, that she can give Addison some relief from the cost of day care, and Jodie some relief from its impersonal feel. And they're lucky that Amy's better, that whatever she was going through when she was fifteen is over. Addison tries not to be envious, of the idea of seventeen and living at home and no kid to take care of, no boyfriend to worry about.

Then she makes herself laugh without humor, wondering which _boyfriend_ she means.

"No way!"

"Jesus, Amy!" Mark is leaping up, throwing Addison her shirt, wrapping the sheet around himself; Amy's mouth is wide with surprise and Addison is almost in tears.

"Good thing I left Jodie in the car. I didn't know you were doing a live sex show in here."

_Please, Amy, please, _Addison begs her. _Please don't tell Derek._

_What do you think I am, an idiot?_

Then Amy smiles at her, actually smiles. Addison struggles into her t-shirt and tries to hold back her tears. But Amy's as good as her word if the next week or two are any indication. Sunday dinner at Carolyn's, leftovers slipped discreetly to her on the way out. As discreet as Mark's hand on her thigh at dinner, the brush of his fingers against her lower back when she leaves. They have to be careful. They have to be better. Because things are about to change again.

_I'm Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery. Not Shepherd yet. Maybe not ever. I'm late. I'm never late. And I'm not going to tell Derek._

He's standing in her kitchen on the cracked linoleum, making pancakes. Jodie's sitting on the counter, feet dangling, her scar almost faded away now. It'll never go away completely.

Addison looks at Mark in his sweats and bare chest and thinks about a lot of things. What she'll tell Derek when he comes home for Easter. If he comes home. Why Mark seems to fit better in this crappy apartment - because she can still see it for what it is, even if it's home, even if it's all Jodie's ever known - than Derek ever did. If she's going to tell Mark about it or if she's going to take of things on her own. She remembers the Captain, years ago.

_I know people. It will be private. It's been legal for ten years._

She'll be on her own this time.

"Derek will be home for Easter," Mark says tentatively, quietly, when Jodie's consumed with her pancakes. "We could...talk to him."

She grips the carton of milk she's holding so tightly the empty part of the plastic buckles. "I don't know, Mark."

What would it feel like to let go of the Shepherds? Amy, her baby-sitter, Carolyn, provider of meals, support, cars, and the older sisters, giving her hand-me-downs and sometimes-welcome parenting advice. Amy who walked in on them. Carolyn who held Jodie the minute after she was born, who said _maybe if I called your mother _and Addison laughed through her tears because it was almost funny to be naive enough to think Bizzy would want her back. Funny, perhaps, that she found letting go of her own family so much easier than the idea of letting go of Derek's. Now Jodie looks up at her with a milk mustache and Derek's eyes and she wishes she could separate fantasy from fact. Wishes she could do anything except what she has to do now, which is set the milk down, lead Mark into the empty living room, and whisper the news to him.

"What?" Jodie yells from the kitchen.

"Nothing, Jo," Addison calls back, but there are tears in her eyes and not of sadness, she's still woozy from Mark picking her up and twirling her around. He's not mad. He's - he's the opposite of mad. She doesn't say anything to Jodie, can't believe she even told Mark, because how can they do this, they _can't _do this, but the next night when he comes home he has a little bag from the UConn bookstore and there's a tiny onesie in it. _Future Med Student,_ it says, and she laughs. He presents her with a calendar, where he's drawn a circle around her due date. No, not a circle. A wobbly red heart.

He kisses her and it tastes salty, like all her best memories, like the past and the future all at once. Life isn't supposed to feel this good. She blames the hormones for her tears, but what's his excuse?

Still on a high, she surprises him at his little student apartment near UConn, almost humming with delight. It's payday and she's practically in the black this month. She stops for a moment to take in the outside of the low brick building. Mark has two roommates and Addison has a kid so they're almost never there, but she knows he never locks the door. Jodie's on a school field trip and won't be back at eight, and she knows Mark's class and clinical schedules by now. He surprised her, his reaction, the way he wanted this baby. How much he wanted it. She runs her hands over belly, like a secret, before she pushes open the door.

Then time stands still in the little plasterboard getup, silly blue-tacked posters on the wall and dirty laundry in piles on the floor. He's a _kid_, she realizes, he's a kid and she's a mother and she's an _idiot_ because there's a blonde in his bed and she's _perfect _and she's probably a medical student too, with a future and no stretch marks and no loose skin where one terrible decision after another grew inside her.

Mark says _shit_ and _Addison, wait, _and he's struggling into his boxers and the blonde is blushing - everywhere - and grabbing for _his _shirt and the fantasy she wanted so hard to hold onto slides out of her hands.

_Wait, let me explain, _but she doesn't wait. She doesn't say a word.

She just stares until her feet work again, and then the door slams shut behind her so hard she can actually feel something breaking.

"Addison, it didn't mean anything. _Addison!" _

He leaves messages on her answering machine, and she keeps it on mute so Jodie won't hear. She squeezes her eyes shut tight at night, recites her old mantra.

_I'm Addison Forbes Montgomery. Not Shepherd. Not Sloan. Never Sloan. I'm -_

_I'm fine, _that's what she says when Jodie asks what's wrong. _I'm not sad._

He catches up with her outside her office at near-spring dusk and she lets him tug her around the corner, away from the bus stop. The car's in the shop again.

"Let me drive you home."

"No. Stay away from me." She pulls her arm out of his grasp. "I was so _stupid._" How many times had Derek told her Mark was a player? That he went through women like an Olympian does sneakers, that he didn't care about anything but getting his next fix.

"Addison, please, just listen to me. What we're doing here, I just - it's you I want, you _must _know that, but you're still with Derek, he doesn't know anything - let's do this, please. Let's do it now. Let's come clean, be a family. You, me, Jodie and the baby. Please, Addison."

She shakes her head. "No, Mark."

"Addison, I know I screwed up, but you - you're with someone else too! You haven't told Derek," he sounds accusing now, the nerve, and she glares at him.

"It's not happening, Mark. We're over. It's over."

"We were a great couple, Addison. Don't do this. And we could have been a family. Still could be."

She hears her voice inching higher, shrill. "Those times you didn't call me back? Or when you had that study group at the library? Was it the blonde, Mark? Or someone else?"

His silence tells her all she needs to know.

She shakes her head, tears in her eyes. "You want to rewrite history. We weren't a great couple. We're not going to be together. And you would be a _terrible_ father."

"Would have been?" His voice cracks, eyes drifting automatically to her stomach, still holding onto her arm. "Addison-"

She tries to force her shoulders into a shrug. "It's over," she says.

"You- you got-"

She nods.

He just stares at her, eyes sheened over with horror, and finally lets her slip out of his grip.

It wasn't true then, but it will be soon. She's Addison, teenaged mother, practical budgeter, so she waits until the car is out of the shop and then she goes to Nancy's office for no other reason than that she can't afford anything else. It's forty dollars at the clinic, a fortune. There's dignity and there's money and there's the way Nancy looks at her worse than pity - like she knows her, is trying to understand. Addison is dry eyed lips pressed together, staring straight ahead.

"Is it-"

Nancy doesn't finish the question and Addison doesn't answer it. She lets Nancy with her severe haircut and her stupid big house in the suburbs purse her lips and picture a one night stand. A stranger. Then Addison's the one picturing things, the medication making her woozy, pretending it was a stranger's hands on her, opening the buttons of her blouse, pushing her jeans over her hips. Holding her against his body, rocking her with his hips and the sound of his heart. A stranger would be better than this. Anything would be better than this. _You would be a terrible father,_ she told him. That's what she hears now instead of the metal clank of instruments.

Nancy holds her hand and Addison knows she'll never be free of this family. They're all tangled up now. There's moisture on her face - sweat or tears - everything's blurry from the medication. Her belly cramps, she thinks she can feel herself breaking and she gasps without meaning to.

"Addison, are you-"

"I'm fine. Just please Nancy, please don't tell Derek."

"I'm a doctor," Nancy assures her.

She kept one baby. She can't keep another. But - and the thought rises unbidden -

_But this one I wanted._

She feels so guilty for thinking it that she drives straight to the Discount Barn - once she can stand up - and buys Jodie that Strawberry Shortcake doll she's refused her ten times because it's stupid, a waste of money, even if the doll's round peachy face smells like strawberries when you scratch it.

Jodie's so excited when she rips open the cardboard that she dances, actually dances, around the room, and Addison lies on the couch, heating pad pressed to her twisting belly, and thinks she can't feel any worse until Jodie pauses mid-sniff and asks "Is Mark coming over tonight?"


	6. Chapter 6

_You're beggin' me to go, you're makin' me stay _  
_Why do you hurt me so bad?  
It would help me to know  
Do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you've had?  
Believe me, believe me, I can't tell you why  
But I'm trapped by your love, and I'm chained to your side  
_

* * *

She's not the one who calls Derek next time.

She's in shock, they tell her later, can't speak, can only stare. _We should call Derek, _someone says. Maybe it's Carolyn when she comes outside. It doesn't take Nancy long to get there.

_Amy, stop! _And _Mark, no!_

They offer her the phone but she can't form words. It's an unseasonably warm April, almost Easter, and her feet are half bare, toes curling in cheap flip flops. Shock is stupid, grief is silly, so what she notices is the color of her toes - a chipping purple that Amy painted, a few weeks ago, and Mark teased her about.

_Are you going to call Derek?_

_Please, Amy, please. Don't tell Derek._

_Just please Nancy, please don't tell Derek._

All her secrets are tied up in this family.

She looks at her bare toes and hears the metal and the sounds and feels twigs break under her feet and something else, something bigger, breaking within her.

The shock has worn off by the time Derek gets there. He flies in with five o'clock shadow on his jaw and deeper shadows under his eyes, a duffel of textbooks slung across his chest. The women in his family line up to embrace him, to weep into the down vest he didn't know he wouldn't need. It's so sunny. It irritates her eyes.

He holds her tight and said _it could have been you_ and then she cries and clutches the fabric of his sweater because some small horrible part of her is whispering _why couldn't it have been you._

His sisters crowd around him. _Addison was there_, they tell him. _She saw it. It's been hard for her. _

Addison doesn't say anything, she just cries.

_Amy, stop,_ but she couldn't stop her. They didn't know it was that bad.

_Amy called me, _that was what she told Mark when she saw him, an uneasy politeness between them now. Carolyn was asleep upstairs, Amy wild-eyed and almost unintelligible. _What happened?_ But Mark wasn't a doctor yet and he was perspiring almost as much as Amy was. _She took something. I don't know. We need to take her to the hospital. _

And Addison flinched and thought about all the signs she missed and how desperately she wanted Amy to be okay and when Amy glared at her and called her a _bitch_ and a _whore_ and told her to get out Addison just stood there, accepting every word of it.

Later she would think it happened in slow motion or too fast to do anything or both, all at once. She would see the woods a quarter mile down the road from the Shepherds' place and think that time stood still there that night. It's the place where everything is happening, fast and slow, first and last, all at once.

It happened like this: Amy was running down the walk with the keys, jumping into the driver's seat of Carolyn's old station wagon, yelling at them to _get the fuck away _and actually starting up the car while Addison screamed _Amy, stop. _And Addison and Mark stared at each other for milliseconds and years of silence and then he grabbed the door handle, yanked it open, threw himself in while it was still moving. And Addison screamed: _Mark, don't! _She could see him wrestling Amy for the keys and then she couldn't see anything except the taillights as she chased the old station wagon down the road. She heard everything as she ran: twigs breaking under the thin soles of her flip-flops, and the terrible sounds of metal meeting oak and then twisting back around itself again.

_Amy, stop! _and _Mark, don't!_

After the crash neighbors flooded the forest with flashlights and concern and red flashing lights reminded her it wasn't a dream and she just stood there, staring at her stupid purple toes until someone said _we should call Derek._

_I already know I'm a terrible person, thanks._

Now he's here, soothing and patient until he isn't. He's taken two weeks of leave and she wants to go to the cemetery but Derek, who already looks too big for their apartment, disagrees.

He's annoyed that she's crying and that Jodie isn't ready for school, hair uncombed, still in her wrinkled pajamas. "I need to go back to school, Addison, you have to pull it together."

She clings to him, wanting comfort, and he holds her for a minute, touching her tangled hair. "Maybe Jodie can stay with my mother for a little while..."

"Don't go back," she begs him, but he shakes his head. Some part of her knows he can't stay, but she needs him here in this small weathered space, needs to see his bare feet with the sparse dark hair on his long funny toes, watch them pad across the cracked kitchen linoleum. The apartment is a gaping wound and she thinks maybe having Derek here will stitch over it. She buried one of Mark's undershirts in her drawer beneath a couple of stretched out bras. She buried the rest much deeper.

"Derek, please-" He just shakes his head again.

"I'm so close, Addie, I need to get through school. You know that."

But he'll never finish, it will be years. He and Mark both in medical school. What does Addison have? Oh. Right. She can type.

She remembers suddenly that Mark is supposed to be in past tense now. She tries it out - Mark _was_ in medical school, like the notice in the _Hartford Courant_ said - but it feels wrong.

"Take a semester off," she hiccups, "Please, Derek-" and he holds her shoulders, pushes her gently away from him.

"You know I can't do that. Look, I'll drive Jodie to school today, okay? But you need to -"

"To what?" She glares, tears still falling down her cheeks. There are toast crumbs in the collar of her pajamas. Jodie ate breakfast on her lap this morning, sensing Addison's sadness, not wanting to let go. Now she tries to remember what Mark's hands felt like. Fresh tears start and Derek grimaces.

"She's going to be late. I'll - look, I'll get her ready, but Addison-" he breaks off, doesn't finish. "Just - get it together, okay?"

He braids Jodie's hair clumsily, hustles her out the door even as she whines that she wants Addison to drive. Addison curls in a ball on the couch, the two broken springs at her hips. Almost like they're holding her. She cries into the green corduroy pillow, the one that used to be on Derek's bed in the old house, with the cotton sticking out of the torn corner.

Everything is wrong and will never be right again.

"Addison." The couch sinks comically when Derek sits down next to her. He's got his I'm-so-patient tone on and it grates. He thinks he's better than her, always has. She floats this to him now.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because - " he searches for words. "Why can't you get over this?"

She swallows hard. "Why _can _you?"

For a moment silence lingers between them.

"They're gone, Addison. You have to let them go. Just - let them go in peace."

And then he gets up and walks out, the heavy screen door swinging shut behind him. She curls into a ball of agony, face in her own sleeve, and cries until the toast crumbs on her cheeks are too itchy to bear. Then she stands in a hot shower, not caring if there's no more warm water for the neighbors, and remembers his hands on her. He was going to finish school and she was going to start it; she was going to forgive him and he was going to forgive her back, and she was going to make something of herself. They were going to go somewhere else. She was going to be someone else.

By the time Derek comes home again, for Thanksgiving, it's so obvious they don't really have to say it. They call it _some time apart _which is a big laugh since hasn't he been gone almost four years? He'll match in the spring for residency, maybe somewhere close but maybe not, and internship is a fresh start.

He nods at the textbooks piled on the table. "College? That's great," he says and part of her wants to throw something at him. Instead they say things she thinks sound grown up, like _friends _and _civil _and _support. _He's going to make money, after all, someday, and he wants to support Jodie.

He says _you really don't need me _and she wonders which one of them he's trying to comfort. Or hurt.

Then she lies in bed, one hand tracing her flat stomach, floating over the loose skin, the pocket of flesh where Jodie once grew, where another baby could have. _I'm Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery. Not Shepherd. Never Shepherd. I'm a mother. I'm going to college. I did better in AP Chem than he did,_ and then she laughs the kind of laugh that turns into sobbing and she decides it will be the last time she cries for him.


	7. Chapter 7

_Love is a battlefield_

* * *

"Are you really going to graduate college this year?" Jodie's blue eyes are half-narrowed. At twelve she already knows to question the seemingly obvious, and Addison is somewhere between proud and ashamed of that.

"I think so," she says carefully. Time moves forward and so did they, still in the same apartment but turns out medical billing is pretty useful and IBM selectric skills weren't as necessary as she thought. They're in the black and they're both in school. Jodie thinks it's great and likes to paw through her mother's books. "I'm going to go to college too," she'll announce and Addison will retort: "You'd better."

They joke about medical school, but Addison's started to think it could be real. Jodie's going to girl scout camp this summer, three weeks away, and Addison will have an empty house to study for the MCATs at night. It's real enough to be scary, to seem like it could actually happen. She'll go wherever she gets in, that's what she says and Jodie agrees. Addison thinks it would be nice to live by the beach. Jodie says she wants to go to Seattle - she's a year or two behind, all those coffee houses and music and grunge - but Addison says there's not enough sun there. Jodie's growing up fast, has her own life now, one Addison doesn't always want to examine too closely. And anyway, they'll have to see where she gets in. The decision's out of their hands this time.

They haven't heard from Derek in a while - except for the checks - but Addison thinks that's probably okay. He comes home faithfully for Christmas at least, with Nora, and Addison can admit she's an okay choice, nice enough to Jodie but not too pushy. She's a doctor too, skinny and rather anemic-looking, nothing like Addison, says she wants to wait to have her own children. Last time he was home Derek told Addison he was proud, about college, and she rolled her eyes.

_It's my fault, _he said. _You had a real future, if we hadn't - _but neither of them wants to finish that thought. She accepts his words because they're closer to an apology than she thought she'd get, even if they're for the wrong part of it all. Sometimes people ask her _do you miss him_? And she'll say _yeah_ but to herself she'll admit that's not the _him _she's talking about.

Four years.

"Today would be Amy's twenty-first birthday." She's not sure why she says it aloud. Jodie's no partner in her nostalgia and she's not usually the sort of mother who says that kind of thing aloud - at least, she doesn't think she is.

Jodie cocks her head slightly.

"Aunt Amy," Addison prompts. "You remember her," she says and it comes out more as a command than a question.

"I think so."

Addison only has to close her eyes to see her - seventeen and dead - and hear the way the twigs snapped under her feet when she ran. Derek wasn't there. Derek was never there.

_Why can't you get over it?_

_Why can you?_

_Because it didn't have to happen, _she thought then. Thought it but didn't say it.

Aloud Derek said: _We have to let them go. Just - let them go in peace._

Four years now. Amy would be twenty-one. Mark twenty-nine in July, like Derek and Addison. Three peas in a pod. Three coins in a fountain. _Propose to me in Paris,_ she said when she was seventeen and stupid.

_Seventeen. _It's a big year, a turning point. You could become a mother at seventeen. Or you could become part of the woods, bits of you beneath an ancient oak, scattered like poinsettia. Tiny and red. Toxic to the touch. _Amy, stop,_ she said then, but she didn't.

She feels a hundred years old.

Derek's still in California. A country between them seems more manageable than the size of what came before.

And yet the cycle isn't that strange anymore: of grief, of life. Definitions, though - they still surprise her. That she could be a teenaged mother, unwed, trust fund revoked, future stolen - and yet something else could turn out to be the defining moment of her life. It's not Jodie's conception or her birth that defines her, her miserable infancy or her unremarkable childhood. It's that moment on the Shepherds' lawn, gravel from the driveway poking through cheap flip flops, watching Mark pull open the door of the old station wagon. Once, twice, three times. _Amy, stop. _And _Mark, don't. _It's his hands at the hem of her shirt, hers on the rope of his shoulders. It's her feet in stirrups, Derek's sister between her legs, nothing at all inside of her. It's that night. It's always that night, pebbly gravel on the drive, twigs breaking under her feet when she ran. _Amy, stop. _And _Mark, don't. _She used to dream it happened differently - that he stopped her, or she stopped them both.

Then after a while she stopped having that dream. One day, she thinks, she'll stop dreaming at all. Until then, she's part of the cycle, so she picks up her textbook and waits until she hears the TV click on in the other room, knowing Jodie's occupied. Page two-hundred-twenty six. Chem 30, a pre-med requirement. They're studying the Krebs cycle now.

She thinks just one more time of Mark, the way he pulled the door handle open to hurl himself into the passenger seat next to Amy, ignored her calling after him.

_Amy, stop. _And _Mark, don't. _

He went anyway. And then they were two and they went together, and Amy wasn't alone. She thinks if she could see him one more time she might say _I'm ready to forgive you. _Maybe not for everything but for some things. And _I'm sorry too. _She would think of him pulling open the door and the station wagon peeling down the drive and they way they looked in the tangle of metal, unclear where one began and the other ended, her own scream like a siren cutting the midnight air, and she would say: _Actually, you wouldn't be a terrible father, Mark. You wouldn't be a terrible father at all._

* * *

**All chapter headers from Pat Benatar's _Love is a Battlefield_. Alternate universe stories are so much fun to write because it's fascinating to see what changes - and what doesn't - for the same characters in a new setting. Thoughts? Share them! **_  
_


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